Open-source software is the best way for anyone just starting out in software development to gain real-world experience. Contributing to a project can give you direct hands-on experience, a network of mentors, and a resume builder that recruiters actually notice.
Open source software is software with source code that anyone can inspect, modify, and enhance.
Thoughts
As an active contributor and maintainer of open source software, I’ve come to believe that those communities are among the most important ones someone could join in software development. This is especially true for young programmers with limited experience. Whether self-taught or a first-year university student, I believe that joining an open-source community may be the most beneficial decision you can make on your journey. Working alone on even a great idea won’t expose you to the kinds of challenges, feedback, and problem-solving that come from contributing to an active project maintained by real engineers.
How It Started
Early in my journey to becoming a software engineer, I joined the Code Society Community1 on Discord, where members were building open-source software and sharing it on GitHub. Anyone could join, and the projects were relatively beginner-friendly with a touch of professionalism, since many of the contributors were professional software engineers.
My first contribution taught me more than months of tutorial hell. Contributing gave me not only hands-on experience but the chance to collaborate with other developers, receive direct feedback, and learn from seeing my code picked apart through a real code review process2. That experience helped me understand what I did wrong, why it was wrong, and other ways to implement what I had written. That experience helped shape the way I think and write code to this day.
The Impact It Had
Looking back, that first contribution ended up having a bigger impact than I expected. When I applied for internships during my second year of university, it became one of the strongest parts of my resume. It wasn’t just a project; it was proof of collaboration, communication, and real engineering practice. Six months after that first pull request, I landed my first software engineering internship at Uber. At the time, it was the only software-related experience I had, but it helped me stand out to recruiters and gave me the confidence I needed during technical interviews.
The Hard Part
One challenge I’ve noticed is that many people express interest in open-source projects but never take the step from joining a community to actively contributing. While some individuals join groups and even engage in discussions about ideas, they often disappear once the implementation phase begins. However, simply joining a group isn’t enough. The only way to fully benefit from a community, beyond networking with like-minded individuals, is to actively contribute to the software that the community is building.
Since my first contribution, I’ve completed two internships as a software engineer, submitted many more pull requests, and even created my own open-source projects to help others who were in the same situation I once was. I wish more students and early-career developers could see the way I see it and start to be more interested in contributing to open-source. Internships are not the only valuable form of experience in software engineering. If you’re dedicated and willing to collaborate with others, contributing to open source can be just as valuable as an internship.
Final Thoughts
That being said, I agree that finding the right community could be challenging, especially with how crowded GitHub has become. But you don’t have to navigate it alone. If you’re a student looking to get started, reach out. I’m happy to guide you toward your first contribution, whether it’s to one of my projects or the community that helped me begin my journey. Tutorials and homework will only take you so far in today’s very crowded software engineering job market. Real growth comes from building software with others.